


Fear Isn't Just Another Word for Wisdom It's for Running

by victoriousscarf



Series: Beware of Heroes [13]
Category: Dune - All Media Types, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:49:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2483636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ori will get what he wants, even if it's a lover who's seen him die in the future and who hears the voices of those who came before him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear Isn't Just Another Word for Wisdom It's for Running

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makarra/gifts).



> My "I'm gonna start writing this in order" thing didn't last very long at all.
> 
> Set more or less at the start of Dune Messiah timeline wise.

Fili dropped his cloak on the back of a chair, Ori looking up from the report he was putting the finishing touches on.

“You shouldn’t go out alone,” he said, fingers rough from sand and gentle around the pen. Even with more marvelous technology in his reach since Arrakis had become the center of the empire, and Thorin known emperor of all, he still preferred to do things the old way, when they had been in the desert and on the run.

“I wasn’t alone,” Fili said, response late because he had been distracted by staring at Ori holding the pen. “I was with Thorin.”

“That’s worse than being out alone,” Ori said, eyes narrowing.

Fili shrugged. “If I don’t go, he would be out alone. People don’t recognize us, and there’s more to see.”

“Did you see Kili?” Ori asked and Fili scowled, shoving the chair closest to Ori back and sitting down. “That’s a yes then. Have you told him you don’t like his sermons?”

Fili snorted, pulling Ori’s report toward him and skimming the top of it. “When Thorin defeated the emperor and declared himself not only the new emperor but also the prophet, he made himself a god. He’s a religion now. The people follow him because he’s their messiah as much as anything. Yes, I’m going to mention to my brother that I don’t like his sermons. Of course I will.”

“You could, you know, try it,” Ori said, and his eyes were too knowing as he watched Fili. “He believes in you, the both of you.”

“That doesn’t make what he says true,” Fili snapped and Ori withdrew slightly. “We all play our parts, Ori, and the one he’s chosen is to be the priest of our religion that we made out of bloody rebellion. That doesn’t mean I have to like what he says to keep the crowds appeased. Let it go.”

“Then why do you keep going to listen to his sermons?” Ori asked and Fili narrowed his eyes, leaning back with his arms crossed.

“Because I still learn more listening to them than not,” he said and Ori sighed, folding his hands, the report completely forgotten between them. “At least mother has removed herself as much as she’s able.”

Ori snorted. “Do you think any of the pilgrims going out to what remains of the desert to meet her actually find what they’re looking for?”

Fili laughed, shaking his head. “No. She probably doesn’t even do them the full courtesy of a speech or a smile.” His mother had always remind him of Shai-Hulud, the sandworm. Imposing and dangerous and beautiful in their terror, but with a single, simple vulnerability that could destroy them. “She allows the pilgrims to come because it is her duty, much as we all have our duties to this family and our mythos. But they would not find what they seek there.”

He looked up when he realized Ori was watching him in silence. “Do you miss the desert?”

“We did our best to destroy the desert,” Fili said. “It was never a simple life. There is no such beauty in harsh survival like that.” A pinch appeared between Ori’s brows. “Of course I miss it,” Fili said, more quietly. “It’s foolishly sentimental, though.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“I try not to be foolishly sentimental,” Fili said and Ori rose abruptly, Fili’s eyes tracking him as he stormed to the window. “Does that bother you so very much?”

“No,” Ori lied and Fili frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Fili asked, not moving or daring to approach him.

“You don’t talk anymore, Fili,” Ori said. “And I get it, you do what you need to do to survive and that means not being what you were before, but,” he turned back around. “You’re cutting yourself off. Becoming honed and bitter like a blade. You weren’t happy as a child,” and Fili only gave him a disbelieving look. “But you weren’t bitterly political either.”

“We weren’t running an empire then.”

“Can’t you just allow yourself whatever happiness you can?” Ori snapped and Fili stilled.

The future he could still see was only fragments, but he could remember just as clearly the visions he had once see before he lost the ability to see which path the future was on. And he had seen so many of Ori, potential futures and futures that were no longer possible, though he could no longer tell the difference.

 When he had met Ori, Fili had been too young in body to appreciate the sight of the future with Ori spread out beneath him, his back arched and mouth open, though as he got older he cradled those visions closer and closer to his chest. Because there had been other futures where neither of them had reached adulthood, or ones where Ori walked away, and too many that ended with one or both of them far dead before their time. Fili had seen in that moment flashes of futures with the boy in front of him drowned on a distant world filled with too much water, killed in a blast of fire, or dead to the pounding of drums.

But since then, his visions of the future had fragmented and fallen apart, and while he could still remember the futures he had seen, he could no longer tell which path his feet were on, which ones were still possible, and where he was being driven.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said instead of trying to explain to Ori how much his fingers ached to touch, how terrified he was of all the possibilities that could come true. Something stirred at the back of his head, slick and hungry and he shoved it away.

“Don’t you,” Ori asked, unimpressed and Fili crossed his arms on the table, looking away.

“You don’t know what you’re asking me.”

Ori came back from the window, bracing his hands on the table and trying to catch Fili’s eye. Fili finally gave in, blue on blue eyes meeting the same. “Don’t I?” he asked. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I think you try,” Fili said and shook his head at how patronizing that sounded. “To understand something that you can’t.”

Eyes narrowing, Ori leaned forward slightly more. “I don’t think you understand,” he said and Fili scowled. “I don’t think you understand why I’m still here, why I don’t care about what or who you are.”

“I would hope you cared about who and what I am,” Fili said, almost wry and Ori hiccupped a laugh before his face became serious again.

“Alright,” he conceded. “You are a member of your family, and that it’s dangerous to be around the lot of you. I know that. I’ve been here a long time. I know you have seen the future and sometimes it drives you mad. I know you have the memories of your ancestors and that you never had a normal childhood because of that. I know you’re terrified of becoming an abomination and letting any of those ancestors control you. I know the whole Bene Gesserit is scared of the same thing and would like to kill you now rather than later. I know you’ve let those things consume you and define who you are.” Fili had barely blinked. “I know being around you is dangerous. I know you’re dangerous. What you don’t understand is that I care about you anyway.”

“Care?” Fili asked, and his voice sounded rough.

“Would you rather I said I love you?” Ori asked, mild and Fili pushed back, standing abruptly. “I thought not.”

“It’s not,” Fili started, and he could remember the possibilities, of Ori sitting surrounded by children with his hair graying and smiling as he told them stories, and of Ori broken at the bottom of an alley, blood flowing from his limbs, of Ori blind and alone in the desert, and of Ori twined around in his sheets, laughing at Fili kissed his shoulder blade. The possibilities choked him.

“Fili,” Ori said, calling him back. “All those futures you see?”

“Yes?” Fili grit out, still under the onslaught of them. This happened more often the closer he was to a monumental moment where everything could change.

“In how many of them are we together?” Ori asked, and his eyes were too sincere and wide.

Fili swallowed hard. Since they had met, as they grew older, he had seen more and more of the futures where Ori moved on to someone else close. “Most of them,” he admitted finally. The longer they had grown up together, the fewer futures existed where they did not eventually come together.

Ori looked surprised by that answer. “Did you always know that?” he asked, and when Fili opened his eyes he had moved closer again. “Was that always the answer?”

“That in most futures you are mine?” Fili asked, and he had, since the moment he saw Ori standing behind his brother and watching him. “Since I saw you.” Even before that, he had dreamed of the boy with ink stained fingers who smiled at him like the sun, though he had too few years to understand the occurring dream. He had not met enough people to notice the lack of the boy until he stood in front of him and Fili realized, like a puzzle slotting into place, that this was the same face.

Ori’s mouth had fallen open and he was frowning. “Then why… why have you done your hardest to push me away? You would have had me leave with your mother and return to the desert. You would have sent me off world if you could have.”

“Why do you think?” Fili returned and Ori reached forward, like he might grab the front of Fiil’s tunic and shake him but his hand stopped, hovering before he touched the other.

“In these futures of yours,” Ori said, looking at his hand and not Fili’s face. “Are there any in which we are happy?”

“Some,” Fili admitted finally, because those visions almost drove him more mad than any of the others combined.

“Are those so few as that?” Ori asked, raising his eyes finally and Fili stopped breathing.

“They are not the majority,” he admitted.

“And are you so afraid then that you would not take what is freely offered in front of you?” Ori asked. “Are you so scared of what could happen you refuse to take what happiness you can while you can?”

Fili opened his mouth and closed it again. He had asked the same thing once, to Thorin, who had looked away from Bilbo long enough to consider him. “You know how it’s going to end,” Fili had said.

“That does not negate what is here now,” Thorin had said and Fili had been unable to keep looking at his eyes, turning abruptly away.

“It’s not that simple,” he said to Ori, hands curling into fists at his side. “By being with you, I could only increase the chances of… there are more futures where you can live a full live without me then with me.”

Ori scowled, fury radiating off him, his shoulders tight. “What if I would rather what happiness with you I can find than a whole lifetime away from your side?”

“You say that now,” Fili snapped and Ori stepped forward again, and it was becoming harder and harder not to drag him forward that last inch.

“You explained to me once,” Ori said, hovering on the edge of too close. “That each choice we made influences which future we will have. The paths we walk are our choices and you see the chances, but that as we make our choices there are futures that fall away because they are no longer possible.” He paused, the moment heavy. “Of all our futures, are the ones where we are happy already gone?”

Fili considered lying, because the number was so small. “No,” he said instead and closed his eyes.  When Ori surged forward, his fingers curled around his hips and the kiss sealed the choice, though Fili couldn’t quite tell which path they were the furthest along.

For the moment he did not care, hauling Ori closer and taking his quiet gasp deep into his lungs, tilting Ori’s head back to deepen the kiss. He had the memory of a thousand such embraces to guide his movements, Ori gasping and trembling beneath his hands.

“I chose this,” Ori said, looking up at him with wide eyes, and Fili had to nod. He already knew he would repeat those words to himself countless times before he curled his fingers beneath Ori’s chin and kissed him again.


End file.
